Page 386 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pol t cal Enterta nment: From The West Wing to South Park |

PolitiCal MusiC
A great deal of popular music can be fairly trivial, calling for nothing more than one’s “baby”
to love one “till the end of time.” In contrast, however, music has also long served as a
mouthpiece of rebellion and politics. Cheaper to produce and more decentralized than film
or television, music has been open to more people from more walks of life. Thus, entire gen-
res are known for their countercultural or subcultural ethos, attitude, and lyrics, from grunge
to rap, punk to rave, and often many country, blues, and/or folk songs. Moreover, music’s
more memorable tunes and words have frequently become rallying points for countercul-
tural or subcultural movements, as was the case most famously with the hippie and peace
movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. In such moments, the music can go far beyond
being a media text, actually working as part of an active culture or subculture.

Of particular concern is entertainment media’s capacity for politics. In crude
terms, we could ask exactly how much politics entertainment can hold. How can
a four-minute song or a half-hour sitcom treat any topic with due complexity?
As we have discussed, many citizens are weary of overt politics in entertain-
ment; consequently, producers of political entertainment all too often err on the
side of cautiousness, adding only a light political streak. Many of the sketches
on Saturday Night Live are illustrative here: often, they will depict political fig-
ures, and they will reference contemporary political events, but ultimately little
of depth is said. For instance, a sketch lampooning President Bush will play with
his malapropisms and style of speech, and will offer quick commentary on a
recent presidential policy or program, but the sketch will end there. For political
decisions to be meaningful, surely we as a society must make them with as much
information available as possible, but sketches of the Saturday Night Live variety
offer little if any room for background information, potentially bastardizing the
issues in question as a result.

ThE PoLiTiCaL PowErs oF EnTErTainmEnT

Nevertheless, critics of political entertainment as “politics lite” run the risk
of holding out for the perfect political vessel. In truth, the often abstract and
highly complex world of politics is usually simplified in the telling, regardless
of the setting. Ideally, each of us could and would reserve significant time to
learn about, discuss, and debate key political issues. But few of us do. Thus,
a pragmatic approach to political entertainment might accept that it is an
imperfect vessel, even one that will at times cause more problems and mis-
understandings than it will resolve, but also that in offering any politics it is
performing a potentially vital service to a fragmented, sometimes uninformed
society.
Moreover, political entertainment can trump its more serious counterparts
by making us care. The news in particular often suffers from telling us that
everything is worth caring about, and that everything is an important story.